Station: [10] The Rococo Palace

The Rococo Palace is the most recent of Dornburg’s three ducal residences. But it’s also the crucial element in the architectural trio. Built between 1736 and 1741, this palace occupies the central position, midway between its neighbours, thus bringing the combined ensemble into being.

Before Duke Ernst August came up with the idea of building a third palace in between the Old Palace and the Renaissance Palace, the town of Dornburg extended all the way to the edge of the rocky plateau. Take a look at your screen. This historical view shows the two older palaces high up on the cliff, with the town church in the middle along with densely packed dwelling houses. Without further ado, Ernst August had 22 town houses demolished to create the necessary space. He originally commissioned the master builder Johann Adolf Richter, but he lacked the skills to cope with the tricky clifftop location.

It was Gottfried Heinrich Krone, architect of the Belvedere in Weimar, who came up with the solution. He opted for a symmetrical design of interlocking pavilions, extended on the valley side by an artificial grotto and a viewing terrace.

And he created a building that looks fundamentally different depending on the angle from which it’s viewed. From the road, the main features are the elaborate relief decoration and the two-tone façade. The palace appears squat and compact.

But if you walk around it and look up at the building from the five-sided viewing terrace, this little pleasure palace has the air of a defiant seat of power, its pale yellow façade a shining presence visible from across the valley. In every sense, the Rococo Palace is designed to make a visual impact from afar.

But the duke’s desire to impress ultimately came to nothing. The building work was still under way when Ernst August inherited the region of Saxony-Eisenach. From then on, he was much more interested in the city palace in Eisenach. Dornburg’s bijou Rococo Palace remained unused. Almost 40 years later, a young Goethe praised the "most beautiful place on the tallest of cliffs”, but lamented the wretched state of the building.

It was only after 1800, under Ernst August's grandson, Goethe's patron Grand Duke Carl August, that the Rococo Palace was brought into use. From then on, it served as a summer residence for the Grand Duke and his guests.

Depiction 1 © Keramik-Museum Bürgel
Depiction 2 © Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg